New Corning Hospital project hits the home stretch

Monday

Mar 31, 2014 at 9:31 PM

There's a clock in the lobby of Guthrie Corning Hospital that counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until its patients are moved into a 232,000-square-foot, $146 million new facility in East Corning.

By Derrick Ekek@the-leader.com

CORNING | There’s a clock in the lobby of Guthrie Corning Hospital that counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until its patients are moved into a 232,000-square-foot, $146 million new facility in East Corning.

As of today, there’s 101 days to go; on Wednesday, the countdown will hit the 100-day mark.

As the three-year project - which broke ground on April 18, 2012 - heads into its final months, it’s crunch time for the engineers, project managers and contractors at the 68-acre site off Interstate 86, Exit 48.

“This is the home stretch,” Corning Hospital President Shirley Magana said Monday.

The building will be substantially completed by May 1, Magana said. A ribbon cutting ceremony will be held June 27, and a community open house will follow on June 29. The staff will move in during early July.

The big day, however, is July 12 - that’s when the patients will be transferred into the new hospital.

“As you can imagine, there’s a huge amount of excitement, just tremendous,” Magana said. “Everyone is really thrilled, very proud of what’s going to be happening, and they know this is going to be so important to our community.”

On Monday afternoon, Guthrie accepted a check for $50,000 from Five Star Bank - coming on the heels of a $25,000 gift from Dresser-Rand last week - and announced that its fundraising campaign for the new hospital - has reached $4,587,351, exceeding the $4 million goal.

That includes $2,841,581 from local businesses and organizations, $746,634 from community members, and $999,136 from Corning Hospital employees and trustees, according to hospital board member Tom Tranter, who chaired the fundraising campaign.

After the announcement, Guthrie officials led a hardhat tour for major donors, community leaders and hospital staff.

The brick exterior, which features mirror glass that reflects a brilliant bluish color, is mostly done. As visitors walk past a stone water fountain into the main entrance - which faces I-86 - there’s an atrium with high ceilings and skylights over the front desk.

That leads into a spacious main corridor, also lit by skylights, that leads into the various departments and the elevators to the upper floor.

“We call it the ‘mall,’” said Debra Raupers, Corning Hospital’s chief nursing officer, who led Monday’s tour. “It’s nice because you’re not walking through a maze of hallways to get where you’re going.”

One of the main themes for the new hospital is to create a “healing environment,” with soft earth tones and an emphasis on privacy and quiet for the patients. The hospital’s 65 rooms, which are all private, feature three “zones,” Raupers said.

On the near side of the rooms, there’s a work zone for doctors and nurses that includes a computer and a box to keep medications at hand. In the middle there’s a bed, flat-screen TV, closet and shelves for the patients’ belongings. On the other side of the room, there’s a sofa that pulls out into a bed for visiting family, and several chairs.

“We’re finding that more and more patients’ loved ones are staying with them when they’re ill, so we want to encourage that,” Raupers said.

The maternity unit has five large suites - each named after the Finger Lakes - that are equipped with everything need for labor, delivery, recovery and post-partum, and have features such as therapeutic whirlpool tubs, Raupers said.

Another main theme is to make the setup as convenient as possible for the staff, with centrally located nurses’ stations and features such as a network of pneumatic tubes that can whisk paperwork anywhere in the hospital, she said.

The hospital staff has had a lot of input over the past few years in trying to develop more efficient ways of doing things, and many were seeing their future workplace for the first time Monday.

The upper floor, which includes the in-patient rooms, two 25-bed medical/surgical units, the maternity suites and the intensive care unit, is nearly finished.

There’s still quite a bit of finishing work to be done and equipment to be installed on the ground floor, which includes the Emergency Department, operating rooms, medical imaging unit and the new 18,400-square-foot Guthrie Cancer Center.

There’s three entrances - the main entrance out front, as well as separate entrances on the west side of the campus for the Emergency Department and Guthrie Cancer Center.

A helipad sits just outside the Emergency Department. A landscaped garden with benches is outside the Cancer Center. Tree-lined parking lots and a large pond will surround the hospital.